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President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday is likely to be a test run of the message Republicans will give to voters in November’s elections for control of the House and the Senate.The president and his party appear vulnerable, with polls showing much of America distrusts how Trump has managed the government in his first year back in office. In addition, the Supreme Court last week struck down one of the chief levers of his economic and foreign policy by ruling he lacked the power to impose many of his sweeping tariffs.Though Trump is expected to focus on domestic issues, his intensifying threats about launching military strikes on Iran over its nuclear program cast a shadow over the address.Here are a few things to watch as Trump tries to make his case: Economy and immigration are no longer strengths for Trump Trump swept back into the White House on promises to bring down prices and restore order to immigration in America. But on both issues, public sentiment has turned against him.Only 39% of U.S. adults approve of his economic leadership and just 38% support him on immigration, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey. Those low numbers show the country is still fretting about the costs of groceries, housing and utilities, a problem compounded by Trump’s whipsawing use of tariffs. They also show how the public was disturbed by videos of violent clashes with protesters, including two U.S. citizens killed by federal agents.Since his party passed a massive tax cut bill last year, Trump has yet to unveil major new policy ideas on the economy. In recent speeches, he has largely offered the public reruns about his tax cuts, plans to reduce mortgage rates and a new government website for buying prescription drugs.The Supreme Court ruling against many of Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday and the president vowing to use other means to forge ahead with import taxes will only prolong the economic turmoil over trade and prices.“I think it makes it even more important that the speech really focus on the economy,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.Conant said between the tariff ruling and a Commerce Department report on Friday that showed U.S. economic growth slowed in the final three months of last year, “the president needs to bolster his economic message.” Blame everything on Biden The administration is trying to make the case that despite Trump’s rewiring of global trade and tax cuts, the economy is still struggling because of choices made in 2021 and 2022 by his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. But Trump is also seeking to take credit for positive signs in the current economy, such as recent stock market gains.“Watch the State of the Union. We’re going to be talking about the economy. We inherited a mess,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday.Of course, Trump made the same kind of argument in his address to a joint session of Congress last year, invoking the Biden name 13 times. Trump’s focus on foreign policy has yet to resonate politically Despite Trump’s America First credo, his aggressive approach abroad over the past year has sparked concerns among some of his supporters about whether he should spend more time focusing on voters at home.Trump, who’s made it clear he covets a Nobel Peace Prize, is likely to use the speech to remind Americans of his attempts to try to broker peace accords in global conflicts.But in many respects, the president hasn’t been extending olive branches. Within the past year, his administration has launched strikes in Yemen, Nigeria and Iran, along with an ongoing campaign of lethal military strikes on alleged drug-trafficking vessels near South America. Trump also shocked the world in January with a surprise raid to capture Venezuela’s then-leader, Nicolás Maduro, and floated the idea of using force to seize Greenland.In recent weeks, as he pressures Iran, Trump has bolstered the U.S. military’s presence in the Middle East. But he has yet to make a clear case to voters about what his actions overseas mean for their lives.He might even minimize foreign policy in his State of the Union despite his belief that it’s been a major success.“For as much as foreign policy has dominated his last year in office, this speech will mostly focus on the economy,” Conant predicted.Vice President JD Vance offered a similar prediction, saying in an interview Saturday on Fox News Channel that in the speech, “you’re going to hear a lot about the importance of bringing jobs back into our country, of reshoring manufacturing, of all these great factories that are being built.”He said Trump would also speak about lowering energy costs. Trump has made the State of the Union his own The State of the Union used to be about recapping accomplishments and seeking to unite the country, but it increasingly reflects divisions in society.“What you’re going to expect is some version of a campaign speech in which the Democrats are the villains, the Republicans he likes are the heroes, and he is the savior not only of the nation but of the globe,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania.Trump supporters might cherish the moment in 2020 when the president midspeech reunited a military family. He also bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio host and author who died in 2021. But that moment turned off Democrats who saw Limbaugh as a destructive figure in political media. Reaction in the room could matter as much as Trump’s words Trump is delivering the speech, but his audience sitting in the House chamber has a big role, too. When Trump delivered his 2020 State of the Union, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi theatrically ripped up a copy of the speech afterward, overshadowing much of what Trump said.House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York has said in a letter to colleagues “it is important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber,” indicating some members might choose not to attend in protest to Trump. But there’s also the possibility of Democrats razzing Trump as Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, did in 2025, leading him to be removed from the chamber.If Trump in his speech lays out a fuller case for why he’s using other mechanisms in federal law to continue his tariffs, Conant said it’ll be interesting to see the reaction from lawmakers.“I think that any House Republicans that don’t applaud his tariffs are going to be featured prominently on the telecast,” he said. State of the Unions have short shelf lives While some presidential phrases endure, much of the rhetoric in State of the Unions is forgettable. And with Trump who’s known for veering off-script there’s a good chance a stray comment or a social media post could step on his message.Matt Latimer, a former Republican speechwriter for then-President George W. Bush, noted in an email that people hear the president talk all of the time, so the State of the Union has lost much of its luster.A State of the Union “only matters in moments when the country is undergoing a great trauma a war, an attack, a global crisis and a president and Congress want to speak in a (mostly) united voice to the country,” he said. “That’s not what we are experiencing now.” Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Cheap tote bag collections everywhere just got an attachable clip-on upgrade. Snatch is a shoulder strap system designed to attach and detach to fabric surfaces without damaging them. The clips are comprised of three pieces of hardwarea button, slotted loop, and fastenerand they can give thin-handled tote bags new life with a wider, sturdier shoulder strap in just a few steps, exemplifying a simple and solutions-oriented Occam’s razor approach to product design. [Photo: CW&T] To assemble, you place fabric over the button piece and thread it through the aluminum slotted loop. The fastener holds it all into place, and the strap is then attached onto a g-hook on the slotted loop. [Image: CW&T] The black strap has a 3M retro-reflective print on one side for nighttime visibility, and it’s woven as a single piece with openings every inch so it can be adjustable without requiring extra hardware. “We wanted to avoid additional hardware or sewing,” says Taylor Levy, one half of CW&T, the Brooklyn art and design studio behind Snatch. “Tri-glide or other buckle hardware works well for adjustable shoulder straps, but all those require sewing. We wanted to keep things as simple as possible, so we opted for this mille-style webbing that lets you hook directly into any notch to adjust strap length.” [Photo: CW&T] The product typifies CW&T’s approach to product design: clean, minimal, and useful. The idea for the Snatch came during a trip when Che-Wei Wang, the agency’s other designer, started thinking about ways to easily and non-destructively attach a strap to a bag or fabric. He considered how when outdoors, fabric can be wrapped around a rock with a knot tied around it and the rock distributes the load to hang a tarp. “Snatch works using the same principle,” Levy says. The device affords a wider, adjustable shoulder strap, making any tote bag personalizable. Additionally, it gives tote bags tracking device compatibility, as the button in the clip was designed to hold an AirTag inside. Snatch retails for $52 and comes with two clips, one strap, and a free tote. [Image: CW&T] But it’s not just for tote bags. CW&T says the device should be thought of as “an interface for attaching anything to fabric” with versatile uses, like making a backpack or attaching a pouch to a shirt, or used to hang a tarp or hammock outdoors. For cute tote bags with uncomfortable or inconvenient handles, though, Snatch makes it possible to finally and more comfortably put them back into rotation.
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E-Commerce
If youre in the Northeast, theres a good chance youll be hunkering down inside for a few days as a major snowstorm batters the East Coast. And if you have a flight to catch, well, theres a high probability that it might not be taking off at all. Due to the blizzard, which is forecast to bring up to two feet of snow in some areas, thousands of flights have already been canceled or delayed. Heres what you need to know if you have a flight to catch. Thousands of flights have already been canceled due to the snowstorm As of the time of this writing, 5,348 flights within, into, or out of the United States today have already been canceled, according to data compiled by the flight tracking platform FlightAware. Additionally, another 703 flights have been delayed. The number of todays cancellations already outpaces yesterday, when 3,436 cancellations within, into, or out of the United States took place. It is highly likely that as the day continues onand the storm continues along its paththat more flights will be canceled or delayed. And the majority of those cancellations and delays can be blamed on the winter storm that is bearing down across the Northeast. As NBC News reports, the storm has already resulted in more than 200,000 people losing power across the impacted area, which stretches from Maryland to Maine. In total, blizzard warnings currently cover 41 million people. School closures have already been announced across major cities like Boston and New York, the latter of which has a travel ban in place until later today. In New York, officials said todays blizzard could be one of the citys 10 worst over the past 150 years. Major airlines issue travel alerts for dozens of airports Americas three largest airlines have issued travel alerts for flights scheduled to depart from or land into dozens of airports. The airlines, which include American, Delta, and United, say the travel alerts are in place from yesterday, February 22, 2026, until Wednesday, February 25, 2026. Those airports include: American Airlines American has issued travel alerts for the following airports due to the winter storm: Baltimore, Maryland (BWI) Boston, Massachusetts (BOS) Hampton / Newport News, Virginia (PHF) Hartford, Connecticut (BDL) New York Kennedy, New York (JFK) New York LaGuardia, New York (LGA) Newark, New Jersey (EWR) Norfolk, Virginia (ORF) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (PHL) Providence, Rhode Island (PVD) Richmond, Virginia (RIC) Salisbury / Ocean City, Maryland (SBY) Washington Dulles, Washington D.C. (IAD) Washington Reagan, Washington D.C. (DCA) White Plains / Westchester County, New York (HPN) Worcester, Massachusetts (ORH) Delta Air Lines Delta has issued travel alerts for the following airports due to the winter storm: Albany, NY (ALB) Allentown, PA (ABE) Baltimore, MD (BWI) Bangor, ME (BGR) Boston, MA (BOS) Charleston, WV (CRW) Charlottesville, VA (CHO) Cleveland, OH (CLE) Elmira, NY (ELM) Harrisburg, PA (MDT) Hartford, CT (BDL) Ithaca, NY (ITH) New York, NY (JFK) New York, NY (LGA) Newark, NJ (EWR) Norfolk, VA (ORF) Philadelphia, PA (PHL) Portland, ME (PWM) Providence, RI (PVD) Richmond, VA (RIC) South Bend, IN (SBN) Washington, DC (DCA) Washington, DC (IAD) White Plains, NY (HPN) Worcester, MA (ORH) United Airlines United has issued travel alerts for the following airports due to the winter storm: Allentown, PA, US (ABE) Albany, NY, US (ALB) Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, PA, US (AVP) Hartford, CT, US (BDL) Boston, MA, US (BOS) Baltimore, MD, US (BWI) Washington, DC, US (DCA) Newark, NJ/New York, NY, US (EWR) Washington, DC, US (IAD) New York, NY, US (JFK) New York, NY, US (LGA) Manchester, NH, US (MHT) Norfolk, VA, US (ORF) Philadelphia, PA, US (PHL) Providence, RI, US (PVD) Portland, ME, US (PWM) Richmond, VA, US (RIC) What should I do if I have a flight scheduled for the next few days? Before you head to the airport, you should monitor for any announcements about your flight. The easiest way to do this is to check your airlines app to see whether your flight is on time, delayed, or canceled. You can also enter your flight information on the airline’s website to get the latest updates for your journey. What are my options if my flight is delayed or canceled? If your flight is delayed or canceled, you should check with your airline about alternate travel options. Some airlines are also allowing affected passengers to reschedule their flights. United, for example, is allowing passengers with original travel dates between February 22 and February 25, 2026, at select airports to change their flights without incurring change fees or fare differences, under certain conditions and limitations. If your flight is delayed or canceledor you just dont want to travel during the stormits best to call your airline to ask what your travel options are.
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E-Commerce
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc.and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. During Charles Giancarlos first all-hands meeting after becoming CEO of Pure Storage in 2017, an employee asked: How long are we going to keep the name Pure Storage? The question suggested that having storage in the companys name limited the range of products and services it could offer customers. My response at the time was, We can think about a new name as soon as we start doing something other than storage, Giancarlo recalls. Though the company may be best known for its data storage platformincluding its all-flash hardware that uses ultraefficient flash memory modules instead of spinning hard drivesGiancarlo is pushing the Santa Clara, Calif.-based tech concern into data management. Today, he unveiled a new name, Everpure, reflecting his ambition to deliver a broader array of products and services to enterprises. A brand by any other name The Everpure moniker preserves the brand equity of Pure from the original company name. Ever nods to the companys Evergreen storage-as-a-subscription program. A new logo retains the Pure Storage logomark, and the companys ticker symbol, PSTG, remains unchanged. Renaming a company isnt cheapbrand management platform Frontify estimates that a complete brand overhaul can cost companies $1 million or more. And while consumer branding changes are often hotly debated (hello, Cracker Barrel), business-to-business (B2B) marketing moves rarely elicit more than a shrug. Giancarlo himself says it is unlikely that anyone will be talking about the name change a year from now. But an enterprise rebranding can help reframe a companys remit for employees, investors, and prospective customers. Indeed, Giancarlo believes the new name will help open doors with chief data officers and AI strategists. The person who cares about data management inside our customers is different from the person that cares about data storage, he explains. And when they hear the name Pure Storage, theyre likely to say, Oh, I dont need to meet with them. Theyre the storage people. New name, new opportunities The rebranding is also a manifestation of Giancarlos bet that enterprises will pay Everpure for more than data storage, aligning the companys name and brand with the future it aspires to build. To take full advantage of the promise of AIsuch as agents that can monitor a supply chain or automatically generate financial reportingcompanies need to organize, tag, and unify information that often exists in different systems and databases. Everpure is ready to help them do that. Many customers who were furthest along in adopting AIwho were gung-hoare saying, my biggest challenge in being able to deploy AI is that my enterprise data is not ready, Giancarlo says. Everpure is seeking to address these challenges with its Enterprise Data Cloud architecture, which promises to simplify the process of cleaning, reshaping, and moving data so it can be useful to companies. However, the companys success is by no means assured. Its competitors include Dell EMC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), heavy hitters who are also seeking to help customers with their data management needs. Giancarlo says Everpures edge is its willingness to invest in innovation. When he arrived at the company, after 13 years at Cisco Systems and 8 years at private equity firm Silverlake, he committed to maintaining heavy investment in research and development. In its fiscal year that ended February 2, 2025, the company spent $804 million on R&D, 25% of its $3.2 billion in total revenue. Everpure reports 2026 revenue this week. While some mature companies might look to improve profitability by cutting that spending, Giancarlo says he still intends to maintain high levels of R&D investment, adding: Maybe Im perpetually immature. What investments do you prioritize? What are the tools your company uses to help realize your ambitions? Send your responses to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Ill publish some of your manifestations in a future newsletter. Read more: the business of rebranding 7 designers on the most influential rebrands of 2025 The biggest branding trends youll see this year 6 situations that call for a rebrand
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New York City is a city of walkers. More trips are made on foot than by car (41% versus 28%) and the citys “80X50” climate action plan envisions that 80% of all trips by 2050 will be made either on foot, by biking, or by public transit. The problem is that pedestrian movement in the city has remained largely unmapped and underestimateduntil now. Together with a team of researchers, Andres Sevtsuk, an associate professor in MITs Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has built what he says is the first complete model of pedestrian activity in New York Cityand it’s a model that can now be applied to any U.S. city. The model, which maps foot traffic across all sidewalks, crosswalks and footpaths in NYC during peak periods, reveals surprising patterns about the way people move around the city, as well as where they are most vulnerable to vehicle crashes (hint: its not Midtown Manhattan). It could have tremendous benefits for city planners. Spatial distribution of estimated foot-traffic volumes in New York City during the weekday AM peak period. Blue labels describe observed pedestrian counts during the AM peak hour (in 2018 or 2019) and the white labels describe model estimates. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning] The pitfalls of a car-centric country Much ink has been spilled on the car-centricity of American cities. Americans average two vehicles per household (among the highest rates in the world) and car ownership has shaped everything from suburban sprawl to infrastructure spending priorities. Over the past decades, transportation agencies have become experts at modeling traffic and predicting vehicle flows, but as Sevtsuk points out in a study accompanying the model that was published in the journal Nature Cities, “what gets counted, counts.” The amount of transportation infrastructure funding that states receive from the Federal Highway Administration, for example, relies on vehicle miles traveled in that state. The more residents of that state drive cars, the more funding the state receives. If cities could count the number of pedestrians that walked across their streets, they could steer more federal money into urban, people-oriented infrastructure. But while car domination in the U.S. has long relied on tremendous lobbying from automakers, the pedestrian movement has had no champion pushing for data collection. “Nobody has monetized walking,” says Sevtsuk, “and this is actually a good thing.” Until 1994, the U.S. didn’t even have an accurate roadway map. That year, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order directing federal agencies to build a standardized digital road network. As Sevtsuk explains, this helped revolutionize traffic modeling and paved the way for more efficient deliveries and various location-based services. If a similar order were to help develop and standardize a pedestrian network nationwide, it would highlight where communities have systematically worse pedestrian infrastructure, and help target public space investments in places where they affect the most people. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning] The Manhattan bias Over the past decade, Sevtsuk and his team have built various district-wide models in places like Melbourne, Australia, and Cambridge, MA, but they have never built a model at this scale. “A lot of cities don’t even know where their sidewalks are,” he says, “and the sad part is, some cities don’t want to know where sidewalks are.” Indeed, cities face legal obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act to maintain accessible sidewalks, but a comprehensive tracking system also exposes them to greater liability. The result, according to Sevtsuk, is a perverse incentive whereby cities that don’t systematically inventory their sidewalk conditions can more easily defend themselves against injury claims by arguing they weren’t aware of specific hazards. In New York City, Sevtsuk’s model revealed illuminating findings. One of them has to do with the way street improvements are funded in the city. In 2020, the NYC Department of Transportation released a New York City Pedestrian Mobility Plan that laid out a road map for ongoing improvements for pedestrians and other road users. The plan laid out five corridor classification types intended to serve as a guideline for pedestrian infrastructure renovations. Most streets with the highest classification type”global corridors” that would receive priority funding for sidewalk widening, pedestrian plazas, and other improvementswere located in Manhattan. Sevtsuk acknowledges that many of these streets, including Broadway and Fifth Avenue, are important corridors, but his teams model shows that 26 streets in the outer boroughs had higher pedestrian volume than 75% of the “global corridors” designated by NYC DOT, yet they were categorized lower, meaning they won’t receive the treatment or investment they deserve. Average pedestrian volumes weekday evening peak period 5-6 p.m. in 59 NYC Community Districts. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning] “We discovered there is a Manhattan bias in policymaking,” he says, noting the discrepancy was likely due to a lack of metrics. “They were guesstimating, and with guesstimation, we’re all flawed and have biases,” he added. Comparison between the total number of crashes involving pedestrian injuries between 2012 and 2023 (left), and the rates of pedestrian injuries (right), where the crash counts are divided by foot-traffic. [Image: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning] Another finding had to do with car crashes. For years, transportation officials have thought the highest number of pedestrian injuries involving vehicle crashes was around Times Square, in Manhattan. But these numbers never took crash rates per pedestrian into account, meaning they simply looked at where the most crashes occur, without considering the fact that there were more crashes simply because there were more people. “We need to take into account how many people actually walk there, then look at crash rates per pedestrian,” says Sevtsuk. Using data from the model, the researchers mapped the rate of pedestrian crashes and found the highest concentration in The Bronx, Staten Island, as well as outer regions of Brooklyn and Queens. Not a single street below 125th in Manhattan lit up on the map. “Midtown sees a lot of crashes but it’s a safe place to walk because it has very high level of foot traffic,” says Sevtsuk. A template for cities worldwide The implications of the team’s work extend far beyond New York City. In fact, what makes the model particularly powerful for other cities is how adaptable it is. The researchers approach builds on a framework called Urban Network Analysis that Sevtsuk and his team have been developing for a decade. The team started by assembling data on where in NYC sidewalks, crosswalks, and footpaths are located, then mapping major trip origins and destinationsthink home to school, job to subway, or restaurant to park. They then simulated how pedestrians move between these locations, accounting for the fact that people don’t always take the shortest route and often have multiple subway stops to choose from. Using pedestrian counts from over 1,000 locations from NYC DOT as ground truth, the team calibrated the model using machine learning to ensure the estimates matched real-world observations. Once calibrated at those locations, the model could predict pedestrian volumes across every street in the city. The process took about a year to complete, but relatively speaking, it’s still much easier than building a full-fledged traffic model, says Sevtsuk. The researchers are now working with 140 cities across the state of Maine to better understand the kinds of upgrades and safety improvements they could make for pedestrians. They have also partnered with LA Metro to identify opportunities where the city could do small but important interventions that would help them better prepare for the LA28 Olympic Games, but also everyday users. “They are trying to use [the interventions] as a kind of legacy, using some of the Games budget to support walking in the city,” says Sevtsuk.
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E-Commerce
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